October 30, 2004 01:59 PM

I think I've figured it out. This country needs to be run by really good third-grade teachers.

I know it's fashionable in the twenty-first century to run around all drama-queeny, acting like we are facing a more complicated, confusing world than anyone has ever faced before. But frankly, I think that's crap. Whether it's at the office, in church, in the media, or in the White House, the dilemmas we face are essentially the same as those of every nine-year-old in the country. And I think that if we had the self-respect to adopt amongst ourselves as adults the same rules that we expect our school children to follow, we'd find ourselves healthier, safer, saner, and happier people.

There are many such rules that could be usefully implemented by all societies. But I suspect that starting with the following two would probably clear up most world problems:

Rule number one . . . NO HITTING. It is the most basic accepted truth of classroom society that no civilized activity of any kind can take place while violence is occurring. Not only does hitting create physical injury and intense psychological distress for the individual victim, but it creates a climate of fear for all students, a level of environmental anxiety that detracts from their ability to enjoy any other pursuit.

Rule number two . . . NO NAME CALLING. On every level except the physical, name calling is just as bad as hitting, and just as destructive to the classroom environment.

It is important to recognize, though (from a third-grade perspective), that the style with which a rule is implemented is every bit as important as the rule itself. That's what distinguishes an excellent teacher from a petty tyrant. The rule of law, which most would say is one of the main pre-conditions for the existence of any true civilization, is ultimately of very limited value unless it is informed by a broader platform of human wisdom.

For example, even if we agree that hitting and name calling are unacceptable, we must recognize that children and adults everywhere throughout history have always had the impulse to commit these acts. Punishing offenders after the fact may inspire some future offenders to better control similar impulses. But asking an individual to bear sole responsibility for consistently controlling an organic impulse, one that may have been reinforced by hundreds of thousands of years of biological evolution, is not a reliable strategy. For example, you can forcefully tell the hormonal teenager to practice abstinence, and your instruction might be followed. But I sure wouldn't put money on it.

Hitters and name-callers who persist in their conduct need to be removed from the classroom. But "punishment" of individuals should be about 10% of the response to an act of violence or insult. The other 90% should be an effort to determine what internal dynamics lead to such impulses, and then to build societal structures that will encourage more healthy and acceptable outlets for those internal dynamics.

For example, many acts of hitting and name-calling arise because a child has emotional concerns that are difficult to express, or that have been expressed but ignored. A daily "group time," where the class sits together in a safe environment of respectful open communication to share the emotional concerns of the day will prevent far more future offenses than the spectacle of public punishment.

Osama bin Laden is a hitter. He is a repeat hitter, one who feels he is justified in hitting and has expressed his intent to continue hitting. He needs to be removed from the classroom. And to the extent that force is necessary to place him in a position where he can no longer hurt people, that force must be fully engaged. (Force, as I see it, is distinct from violence . . . and that's a whole other essay.)

But if we think punishing every known violent offender on the planet is going to protect us from violence, then we are lacking the foresight and wisdom of any good third-grade teacher.

In his most recent videotape, Mr. bin Laden has been very forthcoming about the motives for his violent acts. He sees those motives as valid justifications for violent behavior. This line of thinking must be rejected by any civilized society.

But in the bigger picture, his message is a valuable insight into the psychology and history of people who use violence in the way that he does. In the case of Mr. bin Laden, we see someone who was raised in a society that values violence as a response to certain perceived social problems, someone whose spirituality enshrines violence as a valid strategy for achieving divine favor, someone who has been the victim of violence himself, and who has watched those around him suffer violence at the hands of "superpowers" like Russia and the US. And, of course, he has at various times been supported and encouraged in his violent acts by world governments . . . including the US government, which was glad to support his participation in violence against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 80's.

If we do not take advantage of the insights presented to us by this tape (supplemented, of course, by our own prudent research and analysis), we can capture and even kill every so-called "terrorist" we can find, but we will never be safe.

Since 9/11, our government and some of our churches have chosen to embrace violence more strongly than they have for more than sixty years as a valid solution to certain problems. Many Americans and their loved ones have been the victims of mass violence on our own soil, and are perpetrating and experiencing violence right now in Afghanistan and Iraq. We have become unrepentant name callers, throwing around the insult "terrorist" in the same way that bin Laden throws around the insult "infidel." And the "sound bites" that seem to be the staple strategy for both candidates in the current Presidential campaign are rarely anything more than playground name-calling with a big budget.

The result, I fear, is that we may eventually accomplish the "small task" of disarming bin Laden and his organization, but in the process completely fail at the "big task" of discouraging new bin Ladens. The drift of our society toward violent solutions is not only encouraging violence against America, but creating within America an environment that bears unpleasant similarities to the one which produced bin Laden. I fear that the US since 9/11 has become, due to the choices of its own cultural leaders, a more fertile breeding ground for home-grown violent offenders.

I do believe, though, that this trend can easily be reversed. The beauty of American democracy is that we get what most of us vote for. And between votes, we can make our ideas heard in any number of public contexts.

All we need to do is decide to abide by the classroom rules. Once we adopt that behavior for ourselves, and inform our elected leaders that we expect it of them, change will come quickly.

Decide for yourself. And then VOTE!!

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October 25, 2004 12:45 AM

Well, following up on yesterday's entry . . . Florida is clearly the most deadlocked of all states in the polls. Three separate polls concluded late last week show Florida evenly split between the two candidates. A fourth shows Bush up by a point, and a fifth shows Kerry up by a point. These polls show from 3 - 7 percent still undecided in Florida.

Ohio is a total wild card. The four polls completed at the end of last week show: 6 points Kerry, 5 points Bush, 6 points Kerry, 4 points Bush . . . with 4-7% undecided.

electoral-vote.com forecasts that the undecideds will tip the balance in both states to Kerry.

electionprojection.com is calling Florida for Bush based, it appears, on a 10-day old Mason-Dixon poll giving Bush a 3-point lead (although its hard to say because poll sources aren't cited, so I'm just making an educated guess that this is the data source).

electionprojection.com also puts Ohio in the Bush column even though the polls average out to an exact tie. But his model leans a couple points toward Bush based on the fact that Ohio was a Bush state last year and Bush currently has a slight advantage in nationwide polls.

The trend in both states has been increasing support of Kerry and decreasing support of Bush. Will these trends continue?

Also, it looks like no polls were released this weekend for these two key states, and the candidates have been hard at work. I wonder if Monday will bring any surprises?

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October 23, 2004 11:15 AM

Hey! Long time no talk! How are you? I'm pretty good. Lots to tell you. But I'm going to save that. I wanted to post this as a kind of public service message. I know the closeness of this presidential election is driving me batty with suspense, and I've been obsessively watching poll numbers, which are driving me even crazier with their lack of substance.

If you, like me, are desperately looking for some well-reasoned 2004 Presidential election predictions, I've found some great sites that may make you feel like you are actually getting some solid information and analysis instead of just more SPIN SPIN SPIN.

The first is electoral-vote.com. This guy subscribes to most premium poll services, and so he has access to daily state-by-state data from many sources. Why chase down 20 different polls when he's already doing the homework for you? Every morning, he updates his map with the latest data, and then calculates the bottom line . . . the electoral college votes. So much more helpful than those useless nationwide polls that tell you how many people are leaning toward each candidate. Because as we learned in 2000, the popular vote doesn't really matter. It's all about the college.

My favorite part about this site is that the data is transparent. He uses all available polls, without bias, except those from polling agencies caught doing "push polls." With a wave of your mouse, you can see exactly where his data for each state is coming from.

But while he uses all polls, he provides some interesting data on individual pollsters to help you, the reader, form your own opinion about whether certain polling agencies might be "cooking the books." He also shows you how accurate the pollsters were in the 2000 election.

Finally, he has a cool animated map that gives some great perspective on how things have evolved over the last few months . . . and he shares an interesting piece of trivia that I hadn't heard before: For the last 50 years, voters who are undecided at this point in the election process have ended up voting two-to-one in favor of the challenger. (This is apparently an accepted truth among pundits, and here is some hard backup which seems to actually prove it.) So if you are looking at a poll that says "47% Bush, 45% Kerry, 6% Undecided," recognize that the poll is probably actually pointing toward a final number of 49.7% Bush, 50.3% Kerry.

Another site I've found worth noting and using as a point of comparison is electionprojection.com. This site is not as "user friendly" as electoral-vote.com. The public site is only updated weekly, so the polls he uses are quickly outdated. The sources of his state poll numbers are not as transparent, and his methodology is fairly arcane, which always makes me suspect some kind of shell game. He takes recent state poll numbers and weights them with a factor based on 2000 election results and current national polls. The result is not that much different than if he had just posted the state poll results with no modification. But the weighting does have the effect of making swing states appear a little more likely to vote the way they did in 2000, and a little more likely to vote for Bush if his national job approval rating is good. These assumptions seem reasonable, if not entirely "scientific."

For example, the website states "Job Approval is the one statistic that most closely correlates to actual vote totals for an incumbent president." I can't find any evidence for this correlation. I did find two academic papers that suggest a national job approval percentage of 50% or more in July of an election year is a very strong predictor of electoral success (Bush was at around 47% in July). But neither of these papers support the idea that there is any reliable statistical connection between job approval numbers right before the election and actual votes cast for the incumbent.

(pdf files for paper 1 and paper 2)

Also, electionprojection.com ignores the "undecided" poll results, which is equivalent to assuming that undecideds will ultimately split between Bush and Kerry in the same proportion as the decideds. In fact, the hard evidence cited above suggests that they are likely to cut substantially in Kerry's favor.

Despite these differences in methodology, though, the two sites are fairly consistent in their conclusions, which is a good sign. The authors of both websites have personal partisan allegiances, which are freely stated, but they seem to have made every good faith attempt to keep their number-crunching systematic and impartial. But if there is any such thing as "unconscious bias," these two analysts are clearly "biased" in opposite directions.

If two reasonable methods, devised by different people with different approaches and opposite personal convictions, come up with the same answer, you can bet that you're as close to "true" as you are likely to get. The few places where the two sites differ are the ones that bear the most attention and reflection. For example, on 10/17, the last time electionprojection.com was updated, the only significant difference between the two sites was Florida . . . electoral-vote.com called it completely split and didn't assign it to either candidate, making the race a toss-up. Electionprojection.com was counting it for Bush by 1%, predicting an overall Bush victory.

Since then, new poll results and a drop in Bush's approval rating have resulted in both sites assigning Florida to Kerry. Electoral-vote.com has also shifted Ohio over to Kerry. If Kerry gets Ohio and Florida, Bush is pretty much down for the count.

Are these two prophets showing us the earliest solid indicators of a Kerry victory? Tomorrow, electionprojection.com will post its weekly public results. We'll all get to see how they dovetail with the electoral-vote.com numbers, and what that means for the election.

I can't wait! I'll bring the popcorn if you bring the pretzels.

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